Fred Edson Lafortune

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Fred Edson Lafortune
Lafortune at the Alliance Française of Rhode Island in 2014 Lafortune at the Alliance Française of Rhode Island in 2014
Born	(1982-07-31) 31 July 1982 Anse-à-Veau, Haiti
Occupation	Poet, writer, researcher
Language	French, Haitian Creole
Education	Rhode Island College
Notable awards	Dominique Batraville Prize; Haitian Academy Award for Best Poet of the Year

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Fred Edson Lafortune (born 31 July 1982) is a Haitian poet, writer and researcher. He has published poetry collections in French and Haitian Creole, including An n al Lazil, which won the Dominique Batraville Prize, and he was named Best Poet of the Year by the Haitian Academy Awards in 2018. He is a PhD student in French Language and Literature at Boston University.

Early life and education

Lafortune was born on 31 July 1982 in Anse-à-Veau, Haiti, where he completed his elementary schooling. In 1991, his family moved to Astruc after their house in Anse-à-Veau was destroyed by fire. He moved to Port-au-Prince in 1996 to finish secondary school, then began university studies at the Faculté de Droit des Gonaïves and the École Normale Supérieure. In 2007, he trained in book outreach techniques at the Presses Nationales d'Haïti. He later earned an undergraduate degree in French Studies from Rhode Island College.

Literary career

Lafortune is the founder of Echo Culture, a nonprofit organization that promotes Haitian literature, art and culture. His poems have appeared in European literary magazines including Il Convivio in Italy, Le Manoir des poètes and Art et Poésie.

In October 2007 he was invited to Paris by the Société des Poètes Français to present his literary work, and he attended a seminar on medieval literature and writings and culture in early modern Europe at the Collège de France. During the visit he took part in the youth book event Planète Mots and in the programme "l'Onde Poétique" on Radio Enghien. In March 2009 he returned to France for the Salon du Livre de Paris, where he signed his collection En nulle autre (Le Chasseur abstrait, 2009) and presented the anthology Cahier Haïti, which he co-edited with James Noël. He was interviewed on the Toulouse television channel CT2E, attended a writing workshop with Gérard Noiret at the Théâtre 95 in Cergy, and led workshops for school pupils on Haitian culture and history.

Lafortune directs the L'Immortel poetry collection published by JEBCA Editions in Boston. His poems appear in the Anthologie de poésie haïtienne contemporaine (Éditions du Seuil, Points, 2015), edited by James Noël and gathering 73 poets. In 2023 three of his poems were included in the trilingual anthology This Land, My Beloved / Tè mwen renmen An / Cette terre, mon amour.

His collection Silex (JEBCA Éditions, L'Immortel, 2016) was reviewed in Le Nouvelliste by Mario Malivert, who described it as one of the jewels of the collection. His Creole collection An n al Lazil (Trilingual Press, 2014), a book-length poem with a preface by Pierre Richard Narcisse, was reviewed on Potomitan by Meritès Abelard as an invitation to discover Lazil, the town of his childhood; Abelard identified travel, lack, separation, space-time, death and love as its main themes.

An n al Lazil won the Gran pri pwezi kreyòl Dominique Batraville, presented on 13 January 2018 at the town hall of Jacmel by Pulucià editions with the Alliance française de Jacmel, the Akademi Kreyòl Ayisyen, the Université publique du Sud-Est, the town hall and the newspaper Le National as co-organizers. Lafortune, who was living in the United States, was represented at the ceremony by Jean-Emmanuel Jacquet; the prize included a month-long writing residency in Jacmel, US$1,000, a trophy, a medal, a certificate and books. In 2018 he received the Best Poet of the Year Award from the Haitian Academy Awards.

In 2024 he published the short story "White Dogs" in Transition Magazine (issue T136). The story follows a mother and her ten-year-old son in a small Haitian village and deals with the effects of United States imperialism in Haiti, including the 1980s massacre of the Creole pigs.

Academic career

Lafortune is a PhD student in French Language and Literature at Boston University, where his main research interests are post-colonial studies and literary criticism and theory.

Works

• En nulle autre (poetry, in French). Mazères: Le Chasseur abstrait, 2009. ISBN 978-2-35554-063-9.
• Cahier Haïti (anthology; co-edited with James Noël). Mazères: Le Chasseur abstrait, 2009. ISBN 978-2-35554-041-7.
• An n al Lazil (poetry, in Haitian Creole). Trilingual Press, 2014. ISBN 978-1-936431-20-5.
• Silex (poetry, in French). JEBCA Éditions, collection L'Immortel, 2016. ISBN 978-1-68084-031-5.
• "White Dogs" (short story, in English). Transition Magazine, no. T136, 2024.

Awards

• Dominique Batraville Prize for An n al Lazil (presented January 2018).
• Haitian Academy Award, Best Poet of the Year (2018).

External links

• Official website
• Fred Edson Lafortune at Île en île
• Fred Edson Lafortune at JEBCA Éditions
• Fred Edson Lafortune at Potomitan
• Fred Lafortune — Boston University profile

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